Malcolm's Moist Succulent Adventure was my first attempt to write a novel, mainly begun in order to see if I was capable of stringing enough coherent words together to form an entire book. The title was originally a pun based on Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Adventure but I doubt anybody would ever have got that. It did change briefly to Who Ate Henry Kissinger? at a time when I was foolishly thinking I might be able to get it published but now I've abandoned that idea and changed it back again.

Malcolm was an attempt to try and bring the kind of logic and humour that shaped episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus to a novel, in hindsight quite a flawed idea. It's not a structure that lends itself to continuous narrative very easily. The flow of the story ends up following the jokes rather than the plot or characters, which is alright in a half hour sketch show but not so engaging when reading 80,000 words of prose. I should have taken the Monty Python films as a clue really. The Life of Brian is usually hailed as the best Monty Python film. It's got the most cohesive structure and, aside from the short sequence where Brian falls into the passing alien spaceship, sticks to one continuous storyline. Basically it's the film least like an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus! Resisting such well-worn clichés as having a beginning, a middle and an end is not a good idea in a film nor, as I have learned, a novel. Not if you want other people to read it anyway.

Unfortunately, The Life of Brian isn't my favourite Python film and that's probably part of the other reason why Malcolm turned out the way it did. When I started I wasn't planning on doing anything with the book so I was completely self indulgent about it. Things I got bored with (such as the plot - a minor detail!) I dropped to the background. Unsurprisingly, the book has ended up being quite difficult to engage with.

I believe it has two main, fundamental flaws:

1: Characters

There are too many characters introduced too soon and too briefly. It is very hard to decide who is the main character, which makes it very hard to engage with any of them.

2: Plot

I got very bored of the plot for this book so went off on a major tangent, one of the basic mistakes people who teach about this kind of thing warn you against! What was supposed to be 1 chapter ended up becoming the second half of the book. Essentially this means the book feels like it just keeps starting again and again and never goes anywhere.

Only 1 out of approximately every 5 people who have started reading Malcolm (that I know of at least) has ever finished it. Nevertheless, here it may be found, so if you're feeling brave be my guest.

If you've any comments to make I would be grateful to receive them. Please email me at the usual address:

rogar@orange.net